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THE 

IOWA 

PIONEER 



By THOMAS H. MACBRIDE 




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THE IOWA PIONEER 

AND 

HIS IDEALS 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY 



Thomas H. Macbride 

H 



ON JUNE TWELFTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIX 

EDUCATION DAY 

OF THE 

SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

OF THE 
CITY OF CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA 






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The Iowa Pioneer and His Ideals 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

Humanity has learned to count by centuries. The 
great chronometer of human story ticlcs centennials, and 
we sons and daughters of time have somehow learned 
to listen for the music of its mighty pendulum. Too 
often the deep monotone has been the roar of battle. 
For a thousand years the centuries have gone out in war 
and the new era has dawned in tumult. Only today a 
new energy rises in the world; the voice of the people 
has at length become the voice of God, and speaking by 
the mouth of an American president commands the 
world to peace. Who doubts but that for this new fac- 
tor in history, our twentieth century which began to fol- 
low precedent, would still be exploding on all shores of 
earth in the flames of universal conflict? Such has ever 
been the music of the horologue of time, whose pen- 
dulum beats centuries. 

Mr. Ruskin, the distinguished Englishman, would 
not visit America because, as is reported, he could not 
endure a country which had no history, which had, as 
he said, neither castles nor cathedrals. No doubt there 
may be satisfaction to some men in looking upon a 
lengthened past and in contemplating the remnants of 
some earlier age; no doubt there is inspiration in his- 
toric lore. But if Mr. Ruskin could have been here 
today he had been compelled to say, if he said the truth, 

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that for the comfort and happiness of Its people Cedar 
Rapids had done more in fifty years than any town of 
equal size in all Europe had accomplished in no mat- 
ter how many centuries. What need have we of that 
background of tyranny and wretchedness and sorrow, 
even though at the last culminating in the light of art 
and song, what need of the darkness when we may 
begin with light? Nature herself anticipates. She 
makes haste today when she would build her greatest 
work; she ignores the ages, only touches as in reminis- 
cence her far, far-stretching past and rears in a few de- 
cades her masterpiece — the palace of a human soul. 
In the shadow of cathedrals, crowned by centuries of 
story, beneath the very arches of castellated ruin by the 
Rhine I have seen the unlettered peasant plowing with 
the family cow. To such a man what avail the cen- 
turies? How much of life from that old cathedral 
gilds his toil? upon his sorrow-dimmed vision what ro- 
mantic spectacle rises, as round the castle walls in penury 
he stumbles during the laborious slow-grinding years of 
human toil? Let us rejoice that fifty years have placed 
here, under these skies benign, more happy, simple 
homes than can be found in any equal area in all the 
ancient world. 

But as a matter of fact, the centuries punctuated 
by war are, after all, too long for us. Our genera- 
tions are too brief. For the men that now live and act 
upon our streets the events of a hundred years agone 
are practically a thousand years away. We fail to find 
any living interest in times so far remote and sympa- 
thize the rather with our red neighbor of the plains who 



counts only the passing moons, or winters, or seasons. 
A shorter grasp is ours, and even fifty years is quite 
enough for the compass of swift-passing sons of men. 
Of those into whose hands came fifty years ago, the 
fresh-writ charter of this town, how few today remain! 
Of the men who first marked these splendid avenues, 
how few yet follow their far-protracted lines! Only 
those of us who were l^hen children in the groves of 
Iowa, or who then chased the shadows that moved in 
summer across the flower-decked plains — only such 
can bring you memories of Iowa's fifty years. 

But I hasten to congratulate the people of this city 
upon their growth, their abounding life and hope, their 
present prosperity, upon all that makes them proud on 
this glad, festal day. I am permitted to speak for 
education, to offer you the felicitations of the schools, 
of the university, and I doubt not, of every school and 
college, of every scholar in the commonwealth. In your 
rejoicing this day every man of learning shares, every 
friend of public education has a part, every humblest 
teacher a personal pride; for is not your triumph, your 
wealth, your culture, are not your virtue, peace and 
order, is not this beautiful city itself spread today upon 
these velvet plains and hills — is not all this but the 
outcome of the knowledge, and the science, and the 
truth taught in our common schools? If the city of 
today is better, not larger, than the city of fifty years 
ago, is It not because of what learning and science, what 
the schools have been able to do for, and to teach man- 
kind? We are all of us today the children of the 
schools and we have come up here to express our appre- 

5 



elation of the honor and the fullness of that too little 
pondered fact ! 

It may not be too often proclaimed that thronging 
millions, increasing wealth, or even added commerce 
and power among the nations of the earth, — that these 
things do not of necessity make a nation great; that 
nation only is great, however seemingly prosperous, 
whose people are not only happy and contented, but 
are wise enough to know their own happiness, sharing 
in the common wealth, knowing the relative values of 
terrestrial things, the equity of requited toil, the pride of 
civil order, the courage of self-respect, the sweetness and 
fruitfulness of peace. Such a nation only is blessed and 
to such a nation only may added millions and increasing 
wealth be of any possible use. But these qualities go 
to make up national as well as personal character, and 
the shaping of national character has been largely com- 
mitted to the schools. Whatever we are today we owe 
to free labor, free faith and free schools. 

Now I am not here to indulge in reminiscence; 
nevertheless in order to make good my argument I may 
be permitted to mention some things which in the his- 
tory of Iowa are not only forever memorable but for- 
ever worthy of memory. We are the children of the 
pioneers. The institutions under which we live have 
come to us by inheritance absolutely direct, quite as 
much so as in the case of streets and boundary lines. 
Mr. Blashfield has given us in our state capitol at Des 
Moines, in a painting, beautiful indeed and deservedly 
admired, his conception of the wagon of the pioneer. 
Seeds spring up behind the rolling wheels, and corn and 

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wheat rise ready for the harvest. None would dispute 
the truthfulness of that fine conception. The grains 
that make all Iowa green today, the very emerald of the 
planet, these all came first directly from the hand of our 
pioneer. But the wagon brought some other things 
which even the wit of the artist, great as that may be, 
has not been competent to declare. The allegorical 
figures that float above may offer some suggestions, but 
the real, the vital, the eternally vivifying, freightage 
of that wagon neither Mr. Blashfield nor any other 
gifted artist may ever fully or rightfully set forth. 
The men who laid the foundations of that social and 
civic structure which we today name Cedar Rapids, were 
no doubt plain men, were like the men who came fifty 
and sixty years ago to every part of Iowa, and the first 
covered wagon that so long ago came driving up along 
this river-threaded valley, the first wagon that stopped 
at even-tide beneath the bur-oaks on the greensward by 
the crystal river, here where now we stand today, that 
wagon brought with it certain principles, certain habits 
of thought and life which made those poor men resting 
there great; made them men of character; men of hope 
and men of power, worthy progenitors of the proud 
civilization that we see, and the yet prouder that shall 
follow, when on the lapse of another fifty years men 
meet again to celebrate not the semi-centennial, but the 
centennial of the civilization of these happy western 
fields. 

The pioneers were men of ideals and on a day like 
this it is well worth our while to reflect what these ideals 
were. We are in danger of being so blinded by our elec- 

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trie lights and so deafened by the roar of our crowding 
commerce that the beauty of these old simple, but as I 
believe, eternal, ideals is likely to be forgotten. Our pion- 
eers were men of faith, men of strong conviction; they 
believed profoundly in certain definite things, and they 
acted according to their concept of high responsibility 
and duty. 

I. In the first place these pioneers of ours believ- 
ed profoundly in themselves. No matter whence they 
came, from New England, from Ohio, from England, 
Ireland, Germany, Bohemia, they were all men of inde- 
pendent spirit, conscious of an ability to do for them- 
selves, to take care of themselves, asking odds of no 
mortal man. Every man of them could drive his own 
team, make or at least mend, his own simple tools and 
on occasion build his own house and furnish it if neces- 
sary. The poorest of them was absolutely independent. 

They were people of supreme natural confidence. 
Not one of them ever asked "Is life worth living?" 
No such miserable interrogatory was ever suggested to 
their nature-guided, nature-loving souls. It was worth 
while to hew and build; it was worth while to sow and 
reap and sow again; it was worth while to rear their 
children in all the cleanliness and simplicity of country 
living, teaching them the fear of God, the love of coun- 
try, the reverence due to older people, the scorn of pride 
and slavery and oppression ; it was worth while to shape 
towns and villages and constitutions, and institutions, 
and a free state in God's open field, beneath divine 
over-bending skies, the empire of good will. In seek- 

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ing a new home they new-found themselves, renewed 
their racial youth in perennial inspiration. 

2. They were generally men of strong religious 
faith. Our fathers generally believed sincerely in God 
and in his governance in this world. His presence 
never departed from them. Even as the covered wagon 
of the immigrant moved along, dusty with the grime of 
travel, across these prairies and through our groves 
evening after evening, around the glowing camp-fire or 
by the light of a smoky lantern, "the priest-like father 
read the sacred page;" the old brown leather-covered 
bible was brought forth, and where only the rustling of 
the leaves or murmur of streams might break primeval 
silence, old and young bent low to hear 

"How Abram was the friend of God on high; 
How he who bore in heaven the second name, 
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head; 
How he who lone in Patmos banished, 
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand; — " 

and listened to those other mighty themes that through 
the Christian centuries have moved the hearts of men. 
And when later on, these wide plains about us were 
everywhere dotted with the settlers' cabins, morning by 
morning and evening by evening, with the dawn and 
with the sunset, went up from pure hearts the incense 
of the morning and the evening sacrifice, with the music 
of sacred song. I have trodden the aisles of vast ca- 
thedrals and the tesselated floors of the proudest fanes 
ever built by men; I have heard the voice of choirs, 
where art and genius by all the blending of unseen har- 
mony strive to move to lofty sentiment the human soul, 



I have stood where music in pulsing waves steals from 
lofty arch and fretted ceiling and through sculptured 
screen as if to imitate the tones of the angelic hosts, 
but no music that ever reached my ear had power and 
cadence, rhythm and sweetness, like to those clear gentle 
tones that on a peaceful morning from a hundred open 
cabin windows moved in quiet measures above the flow- 
er-decked prairies of the long ago. Churches there 
were, too, in those old days, churches in plenty; but they 
were the simplest sort of churches, churches that crystal- 
lized everywhere in those same settlers' cabins. Our 
pioneer had read all too well "Where two or three are 
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst 
of them." Two or three, and especially two or three 
families, were enough for him, and his multitudinous 
churches started into being, rose and are with us to 
this day. 

3. The pioneers of Iowa believed in education. 
The best building in the community whether out on the 
open prairie or in the little village that grew up, as Ce- 
dar Rapids, or Iowa City, or Waterloo, or any little 
town, about the mill, or along the stream — the best 
building then as now, was the school house, and in the 
school house day by day were gathered all the little 
children, in winter all the big children of the neighbor- 
hood; and betimes for spelling or singing exercise, al- 
most the whole community. Our fathers did not per- 
haps know just exactly all that education could do for 
them or for their children; neither do we; much less 
could they anticipate to what perfection of organization 
and efficiency in fifty years their simple schools would 



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grow; but they believed in schools. They had heard 
the injunction, "take fast hold of instruction, let her 
not go for she is thy life!" and they tried to put the 
precept into general effect. The log school house with 
slab benches constituted the physical plant in evidence; 
Instruction in the arts of reading, writing and arithme- 
tic, went steadily along, with such accompanying les- 
sons in history and love of country, as made a proud 
patriot of every son and daughter of the prairie. 

Possibly, by the figure bearing an open book, 
Blashfield in his painting yonder at Des Moines, would 
Indicate the onward sweep of learning. Learning, too, 
came to Iowa and occupied these valleys. No sooner 
was the log school house well established than the col- 
lege walls began to rise. High schools there were none, 
but the college and the academy had a place in every 
center of settlement and these are with us In numbers 
to this day. Who shall estimate the service of these 
Institutions built In nearly every community in Iowa by 
the enthusiasm, the self-sacrifice, the toil, yea by the 
very labor of the hands of the pioneers? To how 
many men, now active In field and court and state, have 
these small Institutions of higher learning been as wells 
of water to the thirsty soul, the fountains of an inspira- 
tion that has made Iowa a land of hope and light. Who 
prizes not the colleges of Iowa knows not the history 
nor the spirit of this commonwealth, nor has he ever 
sought out the hiding places of Its power. Our fath- 
ers were lovers of learning; not learning in its vast- 
ness, but learning In its spirit, its sweetness, its beauty 
and its power; for we must know that Learning her- 

II 



self, In those old days, was still a frugal dame, and yet 
confined her prim meanderings to the limits of a four 
years' course; and never thought to daze the aspiring 
youth with sudden, overwhelming perspective of all her 
intricate highways and byways, in courses graduate, un- 
dergraduate, far extended, where the despairing candi- 
date might consume the waking hours of all his three- 
score years and ten and, if by reason of strength he 
reached four score years, would still find himself in 
learning's name confronted by labor, sorrow and vexa- 
tion of spirit, with the accumulated wisdom of mankind 
still untraversed. Modern learning is vast, and won- 
drous, but after all pure learning as loved by the schol- 
ars of the ages is still compassable and simple. 

Our teachers, too, in their elder day, were simple- 
minded men and women. They were many of them 
graduates of Harvard and Princeton and Yale, and 
of all the old-fashioned colleges of the east — normal 
schools there were none — , and yet they were content 
if the boys could read the Spectator, the Rambler, Ma- 
caulay, Shakespeare and the Bible; satisfied if the youth- 
ful soul could master the triple division of Gaul, the 
sorrows of Cataline — not of Werther — ; they would 
have none of him; could pass the pons asinorum in 
safety, and follow at some gentle distance at least, the 
labyrinthine, moral arguments of good old Bishop But- 
ler. Now and then for variety we heard Demosthenes 
contending for the crown or denouncing Philip of Mace- 
don, or even touched the infinite humanity of the tale 
of Troy divine. But that was all; the most favored 
learned nothing of anything else; but, from such col- 



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leges men went forth, as John Milton says, to perform 
if they could and as they might, "Justly, skilfully and 
magnanimously, all the duties, both public and private, 
of peace and of war." From schools like this a gen- 
eration ago, the boys went forth to serve the republic, 
to guide its armies, to govern its senates, to fill its fields, 
to weave its history in peaceful, righteous living, with 
no taint of graft or selfishness or greed; they were the 
children of the pioneers! 

Out of these simple institutions of fifty years ago 
have come the majestic system of our free schools of 
today, crowned with state college and university, offer- 
ing to every youth in Iowa the whole scope of human 
intellectual effort. I am not here to praise the past. I 
shall never say the former days were better than these; 
I do not believe it. It is true that in the dim light of 
distance all traces of hardness and roughness disappear. 
We remember in this transient world, goodness only; 
the bad is speedily forgotten. Therefore I will say that 
while in our educational effort we have far outrun the 
ideas of the fathers, we have not surpassed, and we 
never shall transcend their high ideals. Their strength 
was in the simple common schools; our pride is in our 
higher schools. They had reason for their pride and 
so have we. But in this we are today in peril. The 
common schools, the rural schools are at the bottom, 
and if they fail us, the whole superstructure is in vain. 
Were I a Carnegie, I should build no library, stone 
monument to my princely wealth, I should endow no 
university, to conserve the learning of the ages, valu- 
able as both these things may be. I should endow the 

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common schools. I would see to it that every common 
school on prairie hill-top, or by the edge of the wood, 
or in the forgotten village was the best in form, in ap- 
pointment, in teaching service, that the wisdom of men 
can suggest. I would equip these schools with the best 
trained, most winning and cultured teachers in the 
world, for here and here always the millions of the re- 
public are trained for high privilege and destiny. The 
stream rises not higher than its fountains. You may 
catch up some hundreds in your high schools, but mil- 
lions go on down the valley and shall more and more, 
as the decades pass, determine the destinies of humanity 
in this new world. I lift my voice this day in behalf 
of the rural schools; you shall not neglect these, if the 
republic is to live. The schools and not the courts of 
naturalization are the gateways to citizenship. Our im- 
migration reaches millions; we are playing a hitherto 
unheard of, a tremendous game, and some do not be- 
lieve in it; I do. Men seek the republic; let them come, 
but I appeal to every man who does come, to every 
Englishman, to every Italian, to every Greek, whatever 
else he may be able or unable to do for his children, 
not to shut them from the schools; not, as he prizes 
their freedom, not, as he loves his own, not, as he values 
the institutions that here welcome him and them; the 
schools alone are set to make us a homogeneous peo- 
ple, to make and keep us one. 

Finally, fellow citizens, just so surely as effect fol- 
lows cause, just so sure are the present fortunate condi- 
tions of this country the result and outcome of the 
forces, moral, social and intellectual forces set in mo- 

H 



tlon by the men and women of fifty years ago. Our 
great wealth and abundance today of all good things, 
our marble, our silver, our shine and splendor on every 
hand, all this has really little to do with our comfort 
and joy as a progressive and independent people; no 
more than the flowing waters, the ample forest, the fer- 
tile soils, that made up the visible wealth of fifty years 
ago. Was it not said 2000 years ago, "The life is 
more than meat, and the body than raiment?" Our 
protecting houses, however fine, are but greater over- 
coats which save us from the weather. We can con- 
ceive of a life in which such things may serv^e us not at 
all, and every wisest man knows how cheap at times all 
earthly possessions may become. Many a man In pres- 
ence of all our modern splendor, many a man whom 
men have envied, too, has looked back in fondest mem- 
ory to a far-away, canvass-covered wagon, in which 
nestled, amid simple household furnishing, half a dozen 
brown-faced children then his total wealth, and his eyes 
have been dim with tears ! 

Mr. Blashfield's wagon has seven bows; the expert 
will tell him it should have but five; but the artist meant 
it should be roomy; it carried much. Like the May- 
flower, the covered wagon carried empire, and the tos- 
sing grasses of the prairie were like crested waves. Its 
journey has ended; it courses the plains no more. Mi- 
gration follows a line of steel, and the pioneer may 
move in a palace car, but the old wagon should not 
be forgotten ; its content was and shall be precious to 
men. Gone is the old ox-yoke with its bows, gone the 
sod house and the cabin, gone the old drop-leaf table 

15 



and the split bottom chair, gone much if not all that 
made up the hardship of fifty years ago, but the ideals of 
that day perish not; nor time nor any decay can touch 
them; they are forever! 

And when fifty years from now our children shall 
gather again as we do now, to mark in pride, and as 
we hope, in peace and gladness, the first century of this 
city's fame and story, let them say as we do now : — 

"No praises of the past are hers 
No pains by hallowing time caressed, 
No broken arch that ministers 
To Time's sad instinct in the breast: 

She builds not on the ground but in the mind 
Her open-hearted palaces — 

Her march the plump mow marks, the sleepless wheel; 
The golden sheaf, the self-swayed common weal; 
The happy homesteads hid in orchard trees, — 

What architect hath bettered these? 

With softened eye the western traveller sees 

A thousand miles of neighbors side by side; 

Holding by toil-won titles, fresh from God, 

The land no serf or seigneur ever trod." 



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